Is There Any Tea on this Spaceship?

Adulthood is a state in which you need to get comfortable with being scared, because so much of life is scary.

You will not, in your lifetime, watch your horse disappear into the Swamp of Sadness. But you will see someone you love in need of help, and you will have to choose whether or not to provide that help, and you will have to accept when you try your hardest and still fail.

You will not, in your lifetime, be menaced by the Wicked Witch of the West, or No-Face, or Ursula - but you will learn that people in your life can become monstrous and untrustworthy when they don't get their way, and you will need to stand against them.

You will not, in your lifetime, become cursed by the iron-ball rot that drove the boar god Jigo into a frenzy. But you will find out that humanity and nature are one and the same, and that rage can pass between them just as fatally as disease.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

@watchanddream Sure! This got a bit lengthier than I intended, but I wanted to try and be thorough.

Put far too simply, xenia is the practice of hospitality, but it's also a ritual and in a sense a contract between guest and host. When a stranger arrives at your doorstep, you're expected to feed them and give them a gift as the host. Typically, you're not even supposed to ask them their name until they've finished their meal. Once you've done this as the host, the guest is now expected to share stories and information about themselves, and not burden you or your household. Typically, people focus on how hosts violate xenia, but guests can also violate xenia.

This is called a guest-friendship, and once it's established, you are expected to offer the same to your host should they ever visit. It's a ritual of hospitality, yes, but it's also used to establish alliances and can be passed down through generations. For example, in the Iliad, when Glaucus and Diomedes discover that their grandparents were guest-friends, they decide not to fight, but rather exchange armor.

Theoxeny is a common story you see in myth where a god (typically Zeus) disguises themselves as a mortal and requests to be hosted by someone. Should the host follow the rules of xenia, they'll be rewarded, but if they fail, they'll be punished or killed.

This is important to the Odyssey, as it comes up multiple times, but in particular, the cyclops, and the suitors. In both these instances, Odysseus arrives disguised and gives a false name, the practices of xenia are failed, and Odysseus reveals himself and punishes the one that failed to follow xenia. The suitors in particular fail xenia, as they both fail as hosts, AND as guests, for burdening Odysseus's household.